Every pharmacy’s business depends on inventory. Finding expired medications on your shelf or running into inaccurate counts can be frustrating for many reasons, most notably, declining profitability and potential loss of patients. The better you manage the flow of goods, the more money you make and the more cash you have on hand to grow your business.
Here are tips that you can utilize to ensure the optimal management of your pharmacy inventory to boost profits.
Avoid accumulating excess inventory
When back-of-store shelves overflow with a surplus of products, you end up tying up your cash in a lot of inventory that doesn’t move off your shelves fast. Instead, track your sales to pinpoint the medications that move quickly and the ones that don’t. Your pharmacy management system may identify your productive vs. dead inventory.
Keep track of analytics and activity
You can’t improve your pharmacy inventory management if you don’t know the numbers behind the inventory. Understanding calculations specific to inventory is essential for benchmarking and tracking activity. It’s important to consistently track figures including total inventory dollars, gross margin, accounts payable turnover, inventory turn days, and gross margin return in inventory (GMROI). Run daily reports that identify your total inventory, slow inventory, and dead inventory. With insights into trends, opportunities, and service levels, you’ll better understand your inventory data across the enterprise and individual locations.
Perform cycle counts
Perform routine or periodic manual audits of inventory to account for shortages, overages, misplaced or stolen products, and more. Customize count frequency to emphasize expensive and fast-moving inventory so you have consistent on hand precision throughout the year. Pick your count days and track staff compliance.
Stay up to date on shortages
Staying diligent in tracking shortages will help you know when to increase your stock or order alternative NDCs with minimal disruption. A drug receives Resolved status when the Drug Shortages Staff (DSS) determines that the market is covered, based on information from all manufacturers. The market is considered covered when supply is available from at least one manufacturer to cover total market demand. However, some manufacturers may not have all presentations available. DSS monitors the supply of products with Resolved status. For the most current supply information, contact the manufacturers. Click here for the complete list!
Incentivize pharmacy technicians
When pharmacy technicians regularly check for and identify short and outdated surplus inventory, it may be possible to reduce losses associated with returns to your reverse distributor, avoid restocking fees from your wholesaler. Essentially moving cash off your shelf and into your bank account. Incentivizing staff will likely be more attentive to these important tasks.
Automate pharmacy inventory management
Streamline inventory with an automated solution that provides visibility into your inventory landscape and improves efficiency. With an automated management system, you’ll know the inventory on hand and the items that need to be replenished. Inventory management can be made seamless with the right tool. Datarithm, driven by predictive analytics, is an automated inventory management solution built to improve your bottom line. Click here to learn more.
